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Moving Back and Looking Forward for 2018 Novice Tour.

Moving Back and Looking Forward for 2018 Novice Tour.

Bike Manawatu is proud to announce the course and more details of the 45th running of the Novice tour, 2018.

For many years the Novice tour has been the last Junior Road Cycling event on the Calendar and has had fantastic support from riders all over the country.

Being staged at the start of December gave the riders a chance to put a “full stop” on the years racing and was a swan song event for riders leaving the Schools racing system.

It did however place the event right in the middle of track season, right at the end of exams and at a time of the year that riders, sponsors and organisers alike were extremely busy in other activities.

Not wanting to be the ones who “missed a year”, our committee has chosen to make a calendar move in two steps

With consultation of Cycling New Zealand, and the wish to running closer to our other Junior Tours, Bike Manawatu will this year run the Novice Tour on September 15thand 16th. The second step to complete the transition is our 2019 event will run March 16th and 17th.

This aligns the 3 major Junior tours at the same time of the year with CHB tour locked in for March 30th-31st and welcoming back TA tour on April 6-7th.

We are pleased to announce that Ashhurst Engineering and Construction are our Naming rights sponsor again for 2018

Race Numbers and Transponder pick up will be at Palmfeild Mazda and Subaru Friday evening with late pick up at the event base, Ashhurst School, the next morning…please let us know if this will be you.

We will again be running 4 age groups, both genders, vying for Yellow, Mountain and Sprint Jerseys.

This year we are accepting U23 and Elite Women to race with the U19 women as happened at CHB this year.

Adam Currie from Central Bike Studios will be on hand Saturday for emergency repairs and assistance.

We cannot thanks Ashhurst School and the community enough for their support on this event

Saturday morning we start with a new version of the Hiwinui Loop Road race circuit that takes us all the way down to Campbells Road. This gives us a longer flat section of road for those building up to NZ Schools in ChCh.

The start and finish are all up Oxford Street with the Hill section in and out of Ashhurst closed to traffic controllers from the start and finish of the races.

Laps and distances vary with Age Groups

Saturday Afternoon there is an ITT. In a reversal from last year we are allowing TT bikes for u19 and this is likely to be the norm moving on, once again to assist CNZ .

U 17 will have clip on Aero bars, nothing allowed for u 13 and 15. Helmets as per current NZC rules

Sunday morning we have our iconic Valley road stage. We will be having an early start as there is the final round of the Mountain Bike series that a lot of our riders compete in that afternoon.

Once again laps and distances to suit age groups with all groups except U 13 starting at Ashhurst School.

The U13 grades this year will start further back up the course to the summit of Valley Road.

This gives them the run down Valley Road that many local riders look forward to every week, with out the climb up Valley road that many dread.

Once again the down hill section coming into Ashhurst will be closed to traffic when the riders are lapping and finishing for safer decents’.

We expect Prizegiving at the Ashhurst Inn to start around 1.30 for an early departure home.

Traffic Management and Safety are our big focus , and all of our expectations increase every year.

Because of the daylight hours and where we are on the calendar we are back to 3 stages this year in a more compact programme.

Novice tour over the years has had a prize money pool, but this was outside the protocol of some of our funding agencies and sponsors wishes.

Moving forward there are Grade Jerseys as always, Trophies as always, but now random Spot Prizes to complete the Prize pool over all the age groups

Our entry fees have reduced, the organisation has stepped up, the event will be awesome, we cant wait to see you there.